Here is a summary of Chapter
2:
Having left the headmaster's office, Braithwaite
descends the stairs and stops outside the first of the classrooms only to be run into by
a tall red-headed girl who quickly says, "Sorry." Then, he opens this classroom's door
and discovers that there is no teacher present. One of the students asks, "Are you
taking Old Hack's place?" Taking his clue from this question, Braithwaite tells the
class that he will check in the staffroom.
When he arrives
in the staffroom, Braithwaite encounters some of the faculty. "A large, hairy,
cadaverous young man in baggy flannel pants" reclines in an easy
chair.
"Ah
another lamb to the slaughter--or shall we say black
sheep?"
Weston furthers the
gloom that he has cast by telling Braithwaite before he leaves, "I'd say you're for
it." After he leaves, Braithwaite meets other faculty members: Mrs. Grace Dale-Evans.
who asks him if he is ex-service, and offers to introduce him to the others after the
bell. In the meantime, Braithwaite surveys the depressing situation of the schoolyard
with its rusty fence and courtyard littered with newspaper, candy wrappers and "great
blobs of mucus everywhere," testifying to the heavy colds of the
children.
When the teachers turn up, Braithwaite meets Miss
Euphemia Phillips, "youngish and mousy." Mrs. Dale-Evans whispers commentary on each
teacher as she introduces them. Miss Vivienne Clintridge, known as Clinty, is the drama
teacher, with a voice "silvery with acceptance." Then, he meets Gillian Blanchard, a
new art teacher, who gives a Freudian interpretation of the efforts of her morning
class. Throughout the conversation with these teachers, Braithwaite wonders why so many
express concern that he will stay at the school.
After
the bell, Braithwaite is appalled when Mrs. Dale-Evans tells him that she has to prepare
a bath for a girl who has been so unsanitary with her person. Amidst all this,
Braithwaite marvels at the perfect neatness and cleanliness of her Domestic Science
Department.
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